It’s All Hallowstide again, where darkness is perturbed and we become more conscious of the tolling church bells. While children prepare their hats and buckets for trick or treat, churchmen expose relics of the blessed, and raise up catafalques for the dead, unaware, we enter into a significant shift, both in the civil and liturgical calendars.

When we hear “Halloween”, we often remember stitched mouths, broken bones, severed heads, and immaculate garbs stained with human blood. But have we ever bothered to look at the word’s etymology? “Hallowe’en” is a truncation for “All Hallows Evening”, hence, it is celebrated on the last day of October, the “eve” of All Saints Day. Due to the close proximity of All Saints Day with All Souls Day, we tend to bypass the former, and go all out on the latter. In the Filipino context of things, where family is of utmost importance, celebrating the dead seems to be more “sensible”, albeit being a Catholic country.

In recent years, we saw a revival of a tradition, and may somewhat seem to be a religious counterpart of a civil event. We see children dressed up as saints rather than monsters. We see St. Michaels rather than Draculas, the Virgin Mary rather than Bloody Mary.

Human beings are emotional beings; and when emotions are accumulated, there is a need for a precipitation, a release, or even a purgation. Dressing up as saints or monsters is an expression of the human heart and consequently, its desires. We, and our imaginations created monsters to tap the dragon in us. Monsters are expressions of an inner struggle with the world and the flesh, that oftentimes result to a fall, a sin, and sin is an ugly thing. Monsters are reflections of catharsis, of a continuing sanitation of the soul, and they act as corporeal reminders of a human person’s propensity to wickedness.

Sanctity and sainthood on the other hand, is post-cathartic, one might say. The saints are figures of eternal bliss, happiness, and peace. These things are exactly those that we seek when we want to undergo purgation. The saints and the blessed in heaven are reflections of the human desire to unleash itself from the claws of oppression and earthly depravity, as well as shining examples in entering the “narrow gate”.

In the effort to establish a connection between these two contrasting things, we are made aware that life on earth is a continual struggle with ourselves, the world and the devil. Our effort in dressing after the saints of paradise is an outcry of our desire for everlasting felicity, a joy that would last in sempiternal saecula, forever and ever.

Written on October 31, 2024, All Saints’ Eve by John Russel Manlangit | College of Liberal Arts student

Photos: Projekt ET II | The Josephinian